I told you so 24 Oct 2008 I told you so 1: High cost of internet filtering and controls stricter than Iran’s, oh and critics bullied. I told you so 2: Terrorism laws unsafe, court rejects charge of breaking laws that did not exist when the “crime” was done Censorship Internet filtering Politics Race and politics Technology
Australian stuff On preventive censorship versus punishment 2 Sep 2009 In the last few years, there has been an increasing tendency of so-called democratic governments to increase the amount of control they have over their population, under the guise of various “emergencies”: terrorism, child pornography and of course a slightly more honest concern over property rights. Just today, the Australian… Read More
Politics "Including none at all" 16 Jan 2010 Just when I start to get cynical about Obama’s agenda, he proclaims this: Long before our Nation’s independence, weary settlers sought refuge on our shores to escape religious persecution on other continents. Recognizing their strife and toil, it was the genius of America’s forefathers to protect our freedom of religion,… Read More
Academe Is reality liberal biased? Are liberals reality biased? 15 Jun 201118 Sep 2017 Josh Rosenau has a piece up on Chris Mooney’s latest article on the Republican war on science in the US. Conservative bodies around the western world seem to resist science when it conflicts with policy (usually driven by PR from large corporations), so the point is more than simply American… Read More
Maybe, just maybe, this will start the process of dismantling the terrorism laws, but I’m not holding my breath.
This is why so many Americans want to keep the right to have weapons – at the end of the day, people have no means to protect themselves againt the government. I mean, the police and the army obey the government, not the population. So what is a people to do if its government unduly deprives it of its fundamental rights? In my opinion, there’s no better protection than for the government to know that it is surrounded by millions of armed citizens. For the government, aggressing the people would be like killing a cop in a police station. In theory anyway… That reasoning may sound a little naive, but keep in mind that at the end of the day, we do rely on force (the police, the army) to protect ourselves against other citizens or against people from other countries, so relying on force to protect ourselves against a government is only a continuation of that reasoning.